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The Organ Grinder opens this Friday at 4pm, with free pork pies assumedly while they last!

There’s been a lot of talk, and given our web stats a lot of interest in Blue Monkeys new flagship boozer The Organ Grinder; head honcho John Hickling himself was kind enough to let us have a nosey round and answer a few questions this afternoon.

8 pumps, beers facing away on the corner right are the regular Blue Monkey beers BG Sips and Guerilla

4 Blue Monkey beers will be available, 2 rotating and 2 regulars. The other 4 being proper guests, not just sourced from around Nottingham. John himself was enthusiastic about the selection, with beers and lagers (more about that in a moment) coming from all over the place backed up by a landlord with over 30 years experience, 2 of which running the award winning Crown at Beeston, it’s not hard to see why!

Money is being talked about more than ever, if you want a cheap pint Batemans XB is always on at £2.20 a pint, it’s a steady drink, and that’s a good price for the budget conscious, Blue Monkey beers vary in price but the excellent session beer Original will be £2.50 a pint, again a reasonable price, and if you can’t get a good pint of it here I don’t know where you will.

Being a freehouse allows you to do what you wish with your drinks, and it’s nice to see such a fine selection of lagers, ciders, and fruit wines, these are often overlooked by other pubs. The saying goes you can’t please everyone all of the time, but they’re giving it a go! They’re even going to be doing tea and coffee…

Yes that burner works, and will be on "as soon as it's cold enough"

Work was still ongoing during our visit, but it looks set to be easily one of the best pubs in Nottingham and is likely to be the jewel in the crown of a canning circus pub crawl that must be looking more and more tempting than ever!

If you haven’t read the article below this about Blue Monkeys new Canning Circus powerhouse opening in June, then do so, because Canning Circus looks like it could be turning into quite the force!

You will be forgiven for mistaking The Ropewalk as still being under its previous guise of a 'scream pub' other than the repainting of the garish yellow walls not a great deal else has changed exterior wise.

A great selection, this picture was taken during the mild trail hence 2 milds.

Amidst Nottinghams sea of inflated beer prices (£3+ a pint is becoming far too common, and frankly ridiculous) it’s nice to see a pub offering geniunely good deals on quality ales, and assuming it’s some kind of dosshole full of students would be quite far off the mark, it’s actually light and very spacious with a good mix of clientele.

Nice and open, plenty of seating.

Proper pint glasses.

So here’s the deals, and what makes this probably the most competetive in Nottingham, as the deal states above between 5pm till 9pm weeknights all beers are £1 off, when we went in this makes them between £1.75 to £2.10 a pint.

It’s also worth noting when the above deals not on, it’s 50p off for CAMRA (biggest in Nottingham) averaging the price of a pint at around £2.50, reasonable.

Recently on the way to work I noticed a certain closed down pub near Canning Circus (*COUGH* The Red Lion) had a familiar logo in the window as below:

Ok, its blurry…I was in a bus so sue me…if you need a further clue as to which brewery is taking over this pub how about this

If you need more clues then you must be colour blind. I dont mind hiding i’m totally stoked about this being a huge fan of the Blue Monkey Brewery…

Blue Monkey have taken over ownership of the red lion pub near canning circus and are totally rennovating it into a real ale haven. John from Blue Monkey kindly shared this press release with us.

Stay tuned for more news as we get it and obviously stay tuned for a review of the pub as soon as it opens!

PRESS RELEASE FROM BLUE MONKEY AS OF 17th May 2011

The Organ Grinder Comes to Canning Circus!

You may well have heard the rumours about Blue Monkey opening a pub in Canning Circus, and we can officially reveal that they are true. The Red Lion at the bottom of Alfreton Road (opposite the Running Horse) has been bought by the brewery. They have renamed it ‘The Organ Grinder’, and are investing a significant amount of money to totally renovate it and turn it into a Mecca for real ale fans. The new pub looks set to build on Canning Circus’s cracking reputation for real ale, and should be a real boost to the area.

Blue Monkey’s John Hickling said “We’re currently doing all the structural stuff that’s been neglected for years, such as re-tiling the roof, sorting out the electrics and installing a new heating system. Next we’ll be moving on to the décor, which needs a lot of work. We’re aiming for a proper ‘pub like’ feel to the interior, but with a modern twist – anyone who knows how grotty the pub was when it closed six months ago will be in for a pleasant surprise! I love real fires in pubs, so we’ve opened out the old fireplace and fitted a lovely cast iron log burner, which will be roaring away come Autumn.”

“I’d like to think that Blue Monkey has a great reputation for brewing consistently good beer, and I’m absolutely determined that we’ll carry that forward into selling and serving beer in a first class pub. So the first job was to rip out all the beer dispense equipment which was filthy, and start from scratch. Unusually, we’re paying for all the cellar and dispense equipment ourselves, so we’ll not be in any way tied to a particular brewery or distributor – it will be one of only a few genuinely free houses out there. The plan is have the best range of ales in Nottingham, kept and served in perfect conditions. I think we’ll launch with 8 ale handpulls, maybe 10 if I’m confident that the turnover of beer can justify it. The pub has a massive cellar, cut deep into the sandstone, so it’s perfect for a real ale pub – having plenty of storage space we’ll be able to make sure the beer is really well conditioned before it goes on sale. Obviously we’ll have plenty of Blue Monkey beers on, but also about half the pumps will be given over to other great breweries from near and far. I want to make the ale range really distinctive, so we’ll be going to quite some effort to bring in beers that you won’t find anywhere else in Nottingham. As for other drinks, we’re still finalising the details but we’ll definitely have several unusual real ciders and perries available, a distinctive range of keg beers that you’ll not find elsewhere and a quality wine range available for the non ale drinkers.”

All being well, the pub will be opening in late June. At the time of going to press, a manager is still being sought for the pub so anyone with solid pub management experience, a great personality and a passion for real ale should get in touch with John at Blue Monkey if they fancy a new challenge.